The penetration of feudal structures into the Highlands blurred the distinction between clanship and social systems elsewhere in Scotland and many of the greatest clan chiefs were feudal lords as well as tribal leaders. Fourteenth century chroniclers who noted differences in culture, dress, speech and social behaviour between the Highlands and the Lowlands failed to comment on clanship as a distinguishing characteristic. The effective deployment of military resources depended on the depth and integrity of the social relationships between clan elites and followers. During the Wars of Independence against England, soldiers from the Highlands fought on the Scottish side, but were not given clan affiliations. It used to be thought that Highland clanship died on Culloden Moor in 1746 and was effectively buried by the punitive legislation imposed on Gaeldom after the final defeat of the last Jacobite rebellion.

Three major poet-critics, S. T. Coleridge, Algernon Charles Swinburne, T. S. Eliot, all apprehended the workings of imaginative form as metamorphoses of the circle. Like others in the chorus of detractors, Thomas Disch went looking for Swinburne's soul of sense in all the wrong places. Because Disch wanted meanings that were ingredient in the poet's themes, all he got out of A Century of Roundels was forms. Egregious formal flagrancy, which is notoriously the dragon in the gate of Swinburne's oeuvre, draws into ardent focus what more generally seems the problem stymieing modern readers who just can't get into poetry no matter how hard they try. Talking about merely prosodic interest, where Swinburne is concerned, is like talking about merely dramatic interest in William Shakespeare; but let that pass.

This chapter focuses on the contexts and circumstances in which communist marriages occurred, as well as the institution of the communist marriage, including its conventions and defining characteristics. It considers the family's role in facilitating recruitment and sustaining communist political engagement. The Browns of Yorkshire were a red family. Party stalwarts throughout the interwar period, the Browns were emblematic of the ideal communist couple. Communist couples were much in evidence in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). For the CPGB, the ideal was to create a single identity, a single communist personality, within the family framework, particularly within the confines of the home. As well as precipitating political activism and facilitating recruitment into communism, the wider communist family network beyond the husband and wife pairing performed an important political socialisation role by helping shape communist attitudes, values, and beliefs.

Taking its cue from the anti-war legacy bequeathed to communist youth by Karl Liebknecht, the early Young Communist League (YCL) was fiercely anti-militaristic. As with the adult Party, it was decisions that were taken outside Britain which would mainly determine the form of organisation of the YCL. Institutional ties to the Comintern obliged the Communist Youth International (CYI), its national youth organs, and young communists everywhere, to give unstinting support to the goals of the Soviet Union, as the centre of world communism, at all times. The British YCL had representation on the Executive Committee of the CYI (ECCYI) at its Third Congress in December 1922. Like a responsible parent body, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) took steps to cater for the next generational cohort of communist activists, the youth.